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Monday, January 30, 2012

From last Wednesday's New York Times, here's a piece on the new documentary Room 237, which just premiered at Sundance. The film is about the supposed plethora of "symbols and connections" visible within Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the coded clues auguring secret meanings decipherable to the "subculture of Kubrick fans ... many of whom
have posted their theories online accompanied by maps, videos, and
pages-long explications pleading their cases."

“Room 237,” the first full-length documentary by the director Rodney
Ascher, examines several of the most intriguing of these theories. It’s
really about the Holocaust, one interviewee says, and Mr. Kubrick’s
inability to address the horrors of the Final Solution on film. No, it’s
about a different genocide, that of American Indians, another says,
pointing to all the tribal-theme items adorning the Overlook Hotel’s
walls. A third claims it’s really Kubrick’s veiled confession that he
helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon landings

Uh huh. And yet I confess to being intrigued.

And I got my biggest chuckle of the day by a line at the bottom of the article, an editorial correction that sets the record straight:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described imagery from "The Shining." The gentleman seen with the weird guy in the bear suit is wearing a tuxedo, but not a top hat.

I'm a Seattle-based writer who enjoys, well, a lot of things: movies, theater, books, astronomy, science fiction, a sense of humor, the lambent amber of firelight through Bowmore Darkest Islay, dogs, the combination of chocolate and orange....

"Jack Cole's 'Plastic Man' belongs high on any adult's How to Avoid Prozac list, up there with the best of S.J. Perelman, Laurel and Hardy, Damon Runyon, Tex Avery and the Marx Brothers." — Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker

"You know what your problem is? It's that you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.” — Steve Martin, Grand Canyon

Nick: "I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune."Nora: "I read you were shot five times in the tabloids."Nick: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."— Myrna Loy and William Powell, The Thin Man

"I always dress appropriately and impeccably for all occasions. I would show you a snapshot of myself in a G-string, taken at Simm-La, with a flying wombat, dingo dog and a wily platypus." — Professor Posthlewhistle (W.C. Fields)

"Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle." — G.K. Chesterton